Obama’s Scandalous DOJ

The Obama administration has been such a policy disaster that little attention has been devoted to its scandals. But scandals there are, especially in Eric Holder’s Department of Justice. Pajamas Media has produced a 12-part (so far) series on Holder’s discriminatory hiring practices. Its conclusion can be summarized simply:

Following the Justice Department’s long-delayed compliance with a Freedom of Information Act request, PJMedia recently published content from the resumes of each career attorney hired to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under Attorney General Eric Holder. The articles were written by two former Civil Rights Division attorneys — J. Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky — and PJMedia Editor Richard Pollock.

The Justice Department is forbidden by federal law from hiring employees based on political affiliation. Yet the resumes revealed the following ideological breakdown among the new hires:

Leftist lawyers: 113

Moderate, non-ideological, or conservative lawyers: 0.

Then there is Fast and Furious. As we wrote here, the Fast and Furious scandal blew up in July when the former head of ATF, Kenneth Melson, broke ranks with the Obama administration, apparently declining to take the fall for Eric Holder and others, and gave an interview to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in which, among other things, he described Holder’s efforts to keep a lid on the scandal by blocking ATF from responding in a forthcoming manner to Congress’s requests for information.

Most recently, former Special Agent in Charge William Newell, the head of ATF’s Phoenix office while the gunwalker operation was in progress, filed a 12-page statement with the House committee that amends his sworn testimony before that committee, acknowledging that he “could have given clearer, more complete and more direct responses to some questions.” Again, Pajamas Media has the details.

It is difficult to understand how Obama’s Department of Justice could have thought it a good idea to facilitate, and even finance, the transfer of AK-47s and similar weapons into the hands of Mexican drug gangs. Some think the Obama administration’s purpose was to facilitate gun control by setting up American gun dealers–who were so puzzled by the instructions they got from the feds that at least one of them recorded his phone conversations with ATF agents. I haven’t seen any hard evidence that this was the motive. But if it wasn’t, what was? The administration’s strategy has been to hunker down, stonewall, rely on its friendly relations with journalists, and hope that we never find out.